Sharpe's Devil

black and white beast, with fangs like saw blades, erupted out of the deep to carry the corpse away. Sharpe, who did not see the attack, was inclined to dismiss the story as another monstrous invention, but Cochrane confirmed it. 'It was a killer whale,' he told Sharpe with a shudder, 'nasty things.' Some of Cochrane's men swore the whale's coming was an evil omen, and as the day waned it seemed they must be right, for the ship had begun to settle again, this time ever deeper. The pumps and buckets were losing the battle.

Still they fought, none harder than Cochrane's band of seasoned fighters. They were a strange piratical mixture of criollos, mestizos, Spaniards, Irish, Scots, Englishmen, Americans and even a handful of Frenchmen. They reminded Sharpe yet again of Napoleon's observation about the world being filled with troubled men, accustomed to war, who only waited for a leader to bring them together to assault the citadels of respectable property. Cochrane's seamen, good fighters all, were as savage as their master. 'They fight for money,' Cochrane told Sharpe. 'Some, a few, are here to free their country, but the rest would fight for whichever side paid the largest wages. Which is another reason I need to capture Valdivia. I need its treasury to pay my rascals.'

Yet, next dawn, under a gray, sad sky from which a thin, spiteful rain leached like poison, the frigate was lower in the water than it had been all week. The carpenters suggested that more planks had sprung and suggested heading for land. Cochrane gloomily agreed, but then, just as he had given up hope, a strange sail was seen to northward.

'God help us now,' an Irish sailor said to Harper.

'Why's that?' Harper, seeing the sail, anticipated a rescue.

'Because if that's a Spanish ship then we're all dead men. We don't have a broadside, so they'll either stand off and pound us down into lumpy gravy, or else take us all prisoner, and there'll be no mercy shown to us in Valdivia. They'll have a priest bellowing in our ears while the firing squad sends us all to Abraham's bosom. That's if they don't just hang us from their yardarms first to save the cost of the powder and balls. Jesus, but I should have stayed in Borris, so I should.'

Cochrane ran to the foremast and climbed to the crosstrees where he settled himself with a telescope. There was a long, agonizing wait, then His Lordship sent a cheer rippling down the deck. 'It's the O'Higgins, my boys! It's the O'Higgins!' The relief was as palpable as if a flight of rescuing angels had descended from heaven.

Cochrane's flagship had come south to search for its Admiral, and the men on the Espiritu Santo were saved. To fight again.

Captain Ardiles, with the Espiritu Santa's crew and passengers, was ferried across to the Chilean flagship. The transfers were made in longboats that crashed hard against the Espiritu Santa's side as the prisoners climbed down precarious scrambling nets. The women and children, terrified of the nets, were lowered into the longboats with ropes.

For every prisoner or passenger carried to the O'Higgins, a seaman came back. The O'Higgins also sent food, water and two portable pumps that were lowered into the Espiritu Santa's bilges. Fresh strong arms took over the pumping and suddenly the tired and leaking ship was filled with a new life and hope.

Cochrane, so closely snatched from shipwreck, was ebullient again. He welcomed the reinforcements aboard the Espiritu Santo, hurrahed as their new pumps began spewing water overboard, and insisted on sending obscenely cheerful messages to his own flagship. When he became bored with that occupation he paced the quarterdeck with a bottle of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. 'You never told me, Sharpe,' he hospitably offered a drink from the bottle, 'just why Bautista threw you out of Chile. Surely not because you wanted to filch Vivar's corpse?'

'It was because I was carrying a message for a rebel.'

'Who?'

'A man called Charles. Do you know him?'

'Of course I know him. He's my friend. My God, he's the only man in Santiago I can really trust. What did the message say?'

'I don't know. It was in code.'

Cochrane's face had gone pale. 'So who was it from?' He asked the question in a voice that suggested he was afraid of hearing the answer.

'Napoleon.'

'Oh, dear God.' Cochrane paused. 'And Bautista has the message now?'

'Yes.'

Cochrane swore. 'How in hell's name did you become Boney's messenger?'

'He tricked me into carrying it.' Sharpe explained as best he could, though the explanation sounded lame.

Cochrane, who had seemed appalled when he first heard of the intercepted message, now appeared more interested in the Emperor. 'How was he?' he asked eagerly.

'He was bored,' Sharpe said. 'Bored and fat.'

'But alert? Energetic? Quick?' The one-word questions were fierce.

'No. He looked terrible.'

'How?' Cochrane asked.

'He's out of condition. He's fat and pale.'

'But he made sense to you?' Cochrane asked urgently. 'His brain is still working? He's not lunatic?'

'Christ, no! He made perfect sense!'

Cochrane paused, drawing on his cigar. 'You liked him?'

'Yes, I did.'

'Funny, isn't it? You fight a man most of your life and end up liking the bugger.'

'You met him?' Sharpe asked.

Cochrane shook his head. 'I wanted to. When I was on my way here I wanted to call at Saint Helena, but the winds were wrong and we were already late.' Cochrane had crossed to the rail where he stopped to gaze at the O'Higgins. She was a handsome ship, a fifty-gun battleship that had once sailed in the Spanish Navy and had been renamed by her captors. Her solidity looked wonderfully reassuring compared to the fragility of the half-sinking Espiritu Santo. 'They should have killed Bonaparte,' Cochrane said suddenly. 'They should have stood him against a wall and shot him.'

'You surprise me,' Sharpe said.

'I do?' Cochrane blew a plume of cigar smoke toward his flagship. 'Why?'

'You don't seem a vengeful man, that's why.'

'I don't want vengeance.' Cochrane paused, his eyes resting again on the O'Higgins which rocked her tall masts against the darkening sky. 'I feel sorry for Bonaparte. He's only a young man. It's unfair to lock up a man like that. He set the world on fire, and now he's rotting away. It would have been kinder to have killed him. They should have given him a last salute, a flourish of trumpets, a blaze of glory, and a bullet in his heart. That's how I'd like to go. I don't want to make old bones.' He drank from his bottle. 'How old is Bonaparte?'

'Fifty,' Sharpe said. Just seven years older than himself, he thought.

'I'm forty-five,' Cochrane said, 'and I can't imagine being cooped up on an island forever. My God, Bonaparte could fight a hundred battles yet!'

'That's exactly why they've cooped him up,' Sharpe said.

'I can't help feeling for the man, that's all. And you say he's unwell? But not badly ill?'

'He suffers from nothing that a day's freedom and the smell of a battlefield wouldn't cure.'

'Splendid! Splendid!' Cochrane said delightedly.

Sharpe frowned. 'What I don't understand is why Napoleon would be writing in code to your friend Charles.'

'You don't?' Cochrane asked, as if such a lack of understanding was extraordinary. 'It's simple, really. Charles is a curious fellow; always writing to famous people to seek their versions of history. He doubtless asked the Emperor about Austerlitz or Waterloo or whatever. Nothing to it, Sharpe, nothing at all.'

'And he wrote in code?' Sharpe asked in disbelief.

'How the hell would I know? You must ask Charles or the Emperor, not me.' Cochrane dismissed the matter